Leyburn Star Trails

[DavidTrap (David)]

A fantastic weekend at Leyburn (thanks again for your hospitality Mark & Deb).

This was a sequence of ~800 30 second images (f2.8, ISO 800), stacked using StarStaX (for Mac).

I tried one the night before at ISO 1600. The stacking program uses a lighten blending mode, so the image gets progressively brighter as it adds successive images. At ISO 1600 it was far too bright when trying to include all the images, hence why I reshot this sequence at ISO 800.

When I recover from 3 nights imaging, I'll have a crack at processing my data on NGC253. Amazing weather in SEQ for the long weekend. The seeing last night was very good - Dave's AO unit was almost redundant!

Comments & criticisms welcome as usual. Any suggestions for removing the plane trails would be appreciated - I was thinking of finding the offending subs and drawing a black line over the trail in PS???

DT

[RickS (Rick)]

Very nice star trail, David!

I would have stayed an extra night if you'd warned me that excellent seeing had been arranged

Cheers,
Rick.

[RobF (Rob)]

Love that David. What a great momento for a great weekend. I know what you mean about recovery!

(and yes, thanks again Mark and Debbie for Leyburn hospitality!)

[iceman (Mike)]

Nice image! Well done.

[Octane (Humayun)]

That's really well done.

H

[DavidTrap (David)]

Thanks Rick, Rob & Mike,

Rick - I'm sure your wife would have understood the "need" to stay!

DT

[naskies (Dave)]

Nice one, David. One trick that I've previously used is to back off the exposure -1 or -2 stops in Lightroom before StarStaX stacking.

Yep, last night's seeing was really fantastic. My Lodestar has an image scale of 3'' per pixel - the guide star was just 1 pixel for half the night.

Here's one of your cameos in my time lapse sequence (straight out of camera). I'll also join in the chorus of saying thanks to Mark & Debbie

[RobF (Rob)]

Aggghhhh - the moaning red ghost of Leyburn....!
Appears whenever guiding is too good!

[PeterM]

Wow David and Dave, stunning images.
Great weekend and great company, thanks!
What an excellent night last night was.

[gregbradley]

Great shot David.

Greg.

[DavidTrap (David)]

Thanks H, Peter and Greg. Dave - love the ghost shot!

DT

[rogerg (Roger)]

great startrails I'd remove the unwanted trails using clone tool in PS. Probably on the final stacked image. Usually ends up reasonably easy.

[DavidTrap (David)]

Thanks for the tip Roger,

DT